thoughts on radio, music, technology and change

September 2010

16 September 2010

Another season has arrived, and with it another round of discussion of the burning issues facing my colleagues in Public Radio.

They have noticed that the mobile space has gone nuclear in the wake of the iPhone's arrival three years ago, and are wondering how to respond to that.

To be fair, there is quite a bit of activity around mobile service across the public radio network. There are over 130 "public radio" apps available in the app store, and NPR continues to lead as much as it can by creating a public API to expose its content to stations and other legitimate partners, and by moving toward open source tools that can be widely shared.

PRX has turned itself into an impressive developer with the Public Radio Player app. Try it and experience what public media aggregation could be like. In one place you have access over 500 network and station streams, many of the national programs, and over 1,000 on-demand archive programs. They've also done the This American Life app, and another for WBUR Boston.

There are a number of blogs for and by public radio people, but the private PUBRADIO mailing list remains the best way I know of getting the word out across all parts of the system. I virtually lived on PUBRADIO in the late 1990s when it started; I've drifted away over the years due to other responsibilities, but continue to archive the posts and check in every few weeks to see what's going on. Once and awhile I will join a discussion, which is what this post is about.

Three weeks ago the Pubradio list took on the subject of mobile bandwidth and the demise of unlimited data plans on the AT&T network in a thread called "WOW-Can you afford Mobile Internet Streaming?"

The initial example was extreme: 4 hours a day of streaming 192kbps! Nobody does that, especially over 3G (it wouldn't even be possible over the older Edge data network). Another used the figure of 8 hours a day of listening to compare mobile radio unfavorably to over the air broadcasting. There was lots of fear and loathing, discussion of the technical flaws in streaming. along with some chest-beating about the value of radio and the sanctity of the public radio mission.

The arguments against mobile radio listening were technical, financial, aesthetic (didn't like ear buds), idealist and populist: it's a platform for rich people, it doesn't reach many rural areas, etc. One commenter even compared a connected smart phone to a transistor radio, as if radio listening was all you could do on your smartphone.

The real issue and the underlying fear was whether mobile streaming would replace conventional radio broadcasting. This question was answered decisively by Skip Pizzi and a group of experts he interviewed in a briefing paper published by the Station Resource Group (SRG) in June. It's available as a PDF here.

Cooler heads eventually prevailed. Jake Shapiro of PRX reminded everyone of Skip Pizzi's conclusions: we are entering a multi-media, multi-platform world and we really have no choice but to get used to it.

I got to the discussion late and posted this:

The issue of mobile bandwidth limitations is a short-term fear, not a long-term problem.

There are many excellent reasons why mobile bandwidth and service dependability will be increasing steadily during the next phase of IP communications. Even before the arrival of video streaming, the same argument was made for the desktop web 15 years ago in the wake of color graphics and audio downloads, which it was feared would "overload the Internet."

ISPs responded by simply building more capacity into their networks and adjusting their business models to recover those costs. Today the standard of desktop service is flat rate unlimited plans and few consumers give it a second thought. The mobile data carriers are now going through the same evolution on their networks. Five years from now we will not be worrying about this.

What I'm missing in this "inside radio" discussion is a focus on the listener and the user experience. I think the distinction offered by Richard Paul in this thread is going to be increasingly important: "the weight that one (listener) places on their desire for a broad experience with lots of choice or a narrow and curated one." Clearly public radio service falls on the narrow/curated side of that equation -- what are the likely limitations and opportunities related to that?

As connectivity and bandwidth constraints are ameliorated, the culture of listeners/viewers will be steadily changing, and they will be asking for (more like demanding) more service options and better user experiences on their burgeoning digital platforms, whether fixed or mobile, wireless or hard-wired.

This is already our experience as an online service provider, and is the most important reason why I believe stations should heed Jake Shapiro, Dale Spear and Skip Pizzi's advice and create unique, high-value and/or locally focused web content, or become unique value-added aggregators of content and services.

At same time stations will need to get good at establishing their content and services on all relevant platforms: broadcast, wired IP, wireless IP, and any emerging hybrids of broadcast and Internet.

Smartphones, apps and radio chips will all have role to play, but increasingly, no single software, hardware, network or delivery technology will dominate the fragmented service mix. The "agile integrator" will have the best chance of thriving in this environment.

That ended the discussion. A few weeks passed and I got an email from AT&T trying to be reassuring about their commitment to expanding their network:

"I am writing to thank you for choosing AT&T for your wireless service, and to update you on exciting plans we have to make your wireless experience even better.

You already know that AT&T covers 97% of all Americans. And as an AT&T customer, you have access to the nation's fastest mobile broadband network; a mobile broadband network that allows you to talk and browse the web at the same time; and seamless access to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots - more than any other U.S. wireless provider.

But you may not know the extent of our plans to improve your experience. In 2010 alone, we plan to invest between $18 and $19 billion in our wireless and wireline networks across the country. In fact, we've invested more in our networks over the last three years than any of our U.S. competitors. We've already upgraded our cell sites to enable faster mobile broadband speeds when paired with expanded backhaul, and we plan a similar upgrade at the end of the year that will enable even faster speeds.

We're not stopping there. We are also adding thousands of new cell sites, expanding mobile broadband coverage to millions of customers, installing enhanced fiber backhaul, and increasing the capacity of our data network. Not only do these enhancements provide a better experience today, but they also enable a seamless migration to our next generation of mobile broadband - LTE.

What this means to you is simple: better coverage where it matters most, and fast access to information on the go."

OK, it's corporate PR, but $18/19 billion is, in Everett Dirkson's immortal words, "some real money." So I posted the message to the list with the subject "For those still skeptical about mobile bandwidth" and added:

While there are no guarantees, this kind of rapid evolution and intense competition in the telecommunications and computer industries usually means steadily declining prices for end users. I would not want to bet against mobile streaming of both audio and video becoming increasingly common in this environment.

To my surprise, this provoked another round of grousing about cost, data limits, coverage, and even "effective use of bandwidth and energy consumption" vs. conventional broadcasting. I thought we'd settled the issue — apparently not. I wrote this summation. So far, no pushback.

I posted this notice to make the point that the cellular carriers were committed to building out their networks to provide for the additional demand that is now arriving in the wake of a new wave of IP-equipped mobile devices of all kinds.

To argue that this is irrelevant to public broadcasters either by invoking the core public radio service mission, or from an engineering efficiency perspective is to miss the impact of these developments and the opportunity they represent. It is also wrong to infer that I said it will become "a 100% replacement of traditional wireless." I neither said this nor implied it, nor do I believe it will be the case.

What we are seeing here is another historic connectivity rollout, similar to wired broadband but with different restrictions and dynamics: spectrum is limited, more expensive, and more regulated than on the wired networks, so the expansion will be slower. There is intense political and economic pressure on the FCC to open up these limitations and allow the market forces to assert themselves, as well as intense competition between providers like AT&T and Verizon.

At the same time, both the hardware and especially the software of mobile devices is evolving at 'Internet speed' and there is no question that this will both disrupt and further complicate the already daunting landscape of media, information and entertainment.

As Skip Pizzi has written very persuasively in both an SRG Report and in recent Radio Ink articles, wireless IP networks are not going to replace *either* wired broadband OR over-the-air transmissions anytime soon. Instead, we will have a complex and constantly evolving media environment with multiple delivery technologies, formats and pathways.

These rationalizations also miss the fact that mobile IP service itself is 'interactive' and therefore not in the same class as non-interactive broadcasting. It is on-demand, personalized, diverse, non-local, and altogether less limited.

Interactive services breed interactive users, QED. And while these users overlap the current public media user base, they are also younger and more "engaged" and therefore represent the audiences of the future.

I would also reverse the elitist and financial arguments and suggest that those who are willing to pay for advanced cell phones and data plans are more likely to be willing to support quality content providers like public radio networks, stations, and producers, whether by voluntary contributions or fees for service, and therefore represent the members of the future.

Because every connected smart phone is effectively "the Internet in your pocket" they already have an overall utility to the user far beyond simple media consumption which will drive adoption. Based on experience in other countries with more advanced mobile networks, these trends are unstoppable. Therefore public broadcasters need to embrace and adapt, not look for reasons to delay taking their rightful place on interactive networks.

Thus the conclusion I suggested in my original post a few weeks ago:

...stations will need to get good at establishing their content and services on all relevant platforms: broadcast, wired IP, wireless IP, and any emerging hybrids of broadcast and Internet.

Smartphones, apps and radio chips will all have role to play, but increasingly, no single software, hardware, network or delivery technology will dominate the fragmented service mix. The "agile integrator" will have the best chance of thriving in this environment.